The convergence of telephony and the Internet is ever increasing. For this capability, telephone numbers must be linked to Internet service addresses. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has developed protocols that use the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) to map telephone numbers to Internet addresses. This telephone number mapping is generally referred to as ENUM (tElephone NUmber Mapping).
A publicly accessible database, such as that provided by NeuStar or other ENUM providers, maintains mappings for telephone numbers to Internet addresses. Thus, when a telephone user dials a telephone number that is related to an Internet service with which the user desires to communicate, the carrier network of the telephone user sends an ENUM DNS query to the ENUM provider database to obtain the mapped Internet address for the telephone number. In response to the query, the ENUM provider sends an ENUM response to the carrier network that includes the Internet address (DNS RR) that is mapped to the telephone number. The carrier network then establishes the connection between the telephone and the Internet service by using the mapped Internet address.
Since the ENUM provider database is not directly linked to service provider networks for real-time updating of telephone number information related to subscribers of the service provider networks, the information in the ENUM provider database can become inaccurate or may not otherwise be available. Thus, in response to the ENUM query, a 404-Not-Found error message may be returned to the device, program, or network initiating the call.
Further, the present system has particular disadvantages in the context of subscribers to a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). The MVNO service profile identifier/original called number (SPID/OCN), and corresponding mapped Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) in the Naming Authority Pointer (NAPTR) ENUM record, are not properly identified in today's ENUM system. Only the main carrier that hosts the MVNO is identified with dedicated SPID. Therefore, the NAPTR records for the SPID are being carrier over to the MVNOs, but they may not be correct. For example, Boost subscribers will be identified as Nextel users in the ENUM directory. This can lead to confusion on routing and billing for content service providers/aggregators that do the ENUM lookup.
Also, because the current ENUM databases contain rather static information and need regular maintenance and co-operation from carriers to keep the stored information current, these databases are particularly not able to deal with wireless number portability (WNP) ported numbers in real time.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved system and method for obtaining an internet address associated with a telephone number.